SPLITTING FICTION THREE WAYS
ANY attempt to place the novel in¬side of definitions, setting its meets and bounds, brings us up sharply against the insistent question asked of old and never answered, "What is art?" And for himself, and his cos¬mos, one man's guess at the answer is as good as another's, probably rather better. For every man has his own scheme of creation. Every man is set down alone under the stars and on the more or less solid earth, to build out of his conscious experience the fabric of the dream in which he walks. If he sets down some account of his dream, some definition of his universe in terms of love or fear or hate or joy or any emotional medium in which his conviction comes to him about life, what he makes, for him is art. But it is of necessity not art for any one else. It may he an obscure picture on the sand, drawn with a shell or stick. It may be a Poem of Ecstasy or it may be a cathedral or a large fat Mrs. Rubens in oil, or a patent Madame X. leisurely waiting for the laundry wagon to bring her first aid in the matter of clothes! Whatever it may be, to some man the thing means a conviction about the meaning of life. To its cre¬oli% if to no other soul on earth, the tiling created in joy or pain or fear or love or whatever rise of pulse beat, means art. Others, of course, need not accept it as art; being in ribald spirits they may laugh at it, or other¬wise, being mean and supercilious they may try to suppress and censor the man's expression, which may seem to others ugly or indecent, or stupid or wicked beyond tears. But whether they censor it in laughter or in rage, they must not forget that for the man who made it the thing was art. He has a right to issue his challenge to the world and stand or fall by it. So any man's novel has its rights. Its rights are limited. We don't have to read it, thank Heavens! We don't have to approve it, having read it. We have the royal privilege of declar¬ing that the author is a fool; that no such world as he has fried to depict ever did or could or should exist; which being translated only means that the novelist does not see our world. But, as fellow travelers in a number of different universes, and varying stages of cosmic environment, we have no right as potential artists to deny him the right to print and peddle the poor thing that is his own. Now, here we come to the doctrine of a democratic theory in criticism. And we must come to it when we ad¬mit a variety of different worlds sur¬rounding the consciousness of human beings. Now, this democratic theory of criticism like all democratic theo¬ries and doctrines is based upon a principle of tolerance, of mutual re¬spect, of neighborly kinship in the cos- mos. And if we follow a democratic theory of criticism art must not de¬velop a snobbery, in its lower levels, in, say, the level of criticism. To set up rigid standards, to make inexor¬able rules, to apply static tests, to ac¬cept or reject any man's account of the world in which he lives as false and foolish is dangerous. Also demo¬cratically it is unfair. A number of critics affect to giggle at the novels of Mr. Harold Bell Wright. Their fathers sniffed at Bertha M. Clay. To some of us Mr. Wright does seem to walk among chromos as one who lives in a vast forest of Sunday supple¬ments. And there are those who feel that Mr. Theodore Dreiser's world is afflicted with misanthropy and worms. As between a world of "Simply to Thy Cross I Cling" done in gaudy colors and a world painted from the mud of a pig pen many an average man or woman shrinks from choice. It is not a question of art. There is ne more art in Sister Carrie for instance than in Pollyanna. It is largely a question of the world in which the authors move, of the phi¬losophy of life which inspires the writ¬er. And Sister Carrie may well be as false as Pollyanna in its philosophy. Life is doubtless highly carrieful—to coin a word—for Mr. Dreiser, and for Mrs. Porter it is surely pollyaneous; but for a lot of us it is neither. We trek along on the middle plane out of the heights where Pollyanna walks in trailing clouds of glory, and above the depths where Sister Carrie sloshes in the mud and muck. Possibly these middle averages toddle about with Alice Adams. So let us for the sake of illustration say that broadly there abide these three views of modern American life personified by these three estimable young women, Sister Carrie, Polly¬anna and Alice Adams. They per¬sonify rather distinctive groups in our novel reading public. Possibly the groups represent stratifications in the matter of view-point of life found in our book buying public. Why has not each crowd the right to its own opin¬ion, and why should the exponents of either group stick up their noses at the others? If it pleases the Freeman as the exponent of soured and pickled brains and heart and genital intestines to purvey that kind of wares—say lit¬erary tripes and caviar—well and good. The soured soul market is a trifle slow; but it is steady and seems to be growing. Then why try to stim¬ulate it by affecting that those who deal in spiritual marshmallows under the Wright or Porter brand are igno¬rant venders of adulterated goods? And why insist that those who make and sell common cooking food—say Roast Beef Medium, for example—are base vulgarians. There is no particu¬lar virtue either of craftsmanship, in the making, or in the salesmanship in the selling as between those who handle gamy tripe, or marshmallows, -1r baker's bread. And the snobbery of the tripe makers is as unjustifiable as the unction of King's Daughters at the marshmallow counter. And as for the disdain of the prune and po¬tato peddler, the workers in the other two departments of spiritual refresh¬ment, it is positively wicked; if the tripe department will permit the use even in rhetoric of a word implying the existence of right and wrong. Why can we not have a democracy in our art, and let posterity hang on whatever rewards, prizes or pre¬miums it may choose? The novel is only one form of that outward eva¬nescent expression of our emotions which pass for art. Music, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, pos¬sibly the despised movies, the drama and home making all are reflecting the things that are passing in our hearts. And we have many hearts, and are making "many inventions." For the most part they are fleeting shadows, whether upon the silver screen or in bronze or stone and steel. They pass as we pass. Why quarrel over the forms into which we cast our heart's desire? Why waste our time setting up a fleeting aristocracy in our art? Why make broad our critical phylacteries, why enlarge the borders of our literary garment? Why the Dial? We can cry ourselves black in the face to catch the ear of posterity; but posterity will make its own judgments about us. For that matter is it highly important that posterity shall know us? Other generations have passed without leaving a mark in the sand. Why should we care which mark identifies us, whether Harold Bell Wright's or Booth Tarkington's or Sherwood Anderson's? Neither tells all about us. Each tells much. And the degree of truth in each man's story would seem hardly worth wran¬gling about a hundred years hence. The difference between Winesburg, Ohio and The Shepherd of the Hills, betwePu rtifher and The Bent Twig or A Hazard of New Fortunes may not be so important to the reader of the next century as it may seem to the reader today. And all the hundreds of thousands of copies of The Shep¬herd printed and sold would avail it less if possible in the next century than all the critical claque for Wines¬burg, Ohio. The two or three decades of immortality of The Hazard and The Twig will not help them in that great day of judgment. It is all vanity of vanities and vexa¬tion of spirit, this price making for posterity, this attempt to say what is good and what bad with the miserable rules and standards which we are set¬ting up today. The novel is for the day, as the newspaper or the sky¬scraper or the park monument is. It finds its market in spite of our rules of art. Each novel circulates upon its own level. Its public knows it instinc¬tively. Those seeking marshmallow novels never buy tripe or caviar, nor prunes. And the closed shop among the clerks and artisans in the literary candy trade, in the fictional packing house, or in the grocery store of novel making, does not stimulate more or better produce, nor wider and more intelligent marketing. The Pharisee- ism of the workers in the craft merely makes the consumer smile. He buys what he wants, follows his philosophy, chases his mood, or scents the desir¬able fodder of the moment. The novel he buys tells him what he wishes to know; and something more. Good or bad it fills him with the spiritual pabulum that he needs. At the mo¬ment of his purchase he would reject the kinds found in other books. And gradually as he gets a bellyful, he goes upward and onward, or downward and outward in his tastes and desires, until if he keeps on reading for a life¬time he knows about all that our novels have to tell him—all kinds of them. Then reading has made him a full man. That is the best hope we can have for him. Tr Olaf' 4tnd the